Italo Zuffi. Fronte e retro

From January 20 to May 1, 2022, MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna presents Fronte e retro, the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the artist Italo Zuffi (Imola, 1969), curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Davide Ferri.

The museum presents for the first time in a detailed way the work of one of the main protagonists of Italian art between the nineties and the 2000s, pursuing the investigation on the panorama of visual arts of our country that the museum has been carrying out for years, and confirming the line of research oriented to the documentation of the contemporary artistic context of the territory where the museum is located, which historically descends from the Galleria d'Arte Moderna of Bologna.

The itinerary allows us to analyse Italo Zuffi's work, taking into consideration a spectrum of works ranging from the beginning, in the mid-1990s, to 2020, highlighting the themes that have always inspired his research and that translate into contrasts and oppositions that can act on the body (sometimes that of the artist himself) as well as on the sculptural form: between the ideas of construction and at the same time of destruction/fall; of work and, at the same time, of waste of energy; of softness and rigidity; of fragility and competition (especially with regard to the art system).

In a multiplicity of languages and expressive choices, over 50 selected works - including sculpture, photography, video and performance - reconstruct the artist's poetics through new combinations and without necessarily following a chronological progression. Alongside the best-known and most emblematic works, there will be some of the lesser-known ones, giving rise to new hypotheses of dialogue between them.